Roland

Looting and scavenging were fine before and they are very much improved now. Your 1 or 2 looters will be very happy. Two looters will still be able to keep your group flush with magazines just like they kept you flush with electronic parts in the past. If the magazines aren’t coming fast enough for your enjoyment then some of you might need to do a quest here or there. There really shouldn’t be a huge change to what your group is doing other than figuring out who is going to craft what. In your opening post your main worry was that builders would not be able to level up. Hopefully you understand now that leveling up hasn’t changed and that by building and upgrading blocks you will still earn xp and still advance because the new magazines don’t control that. I can see that I can’t convince you but I’m very confident that your group will see that with some teamwork everything will be okay and builders can still build as they did before. For single player, that’s not true. You do have to loot as a single player if you want to be able to craft better stuff. But in group play as long as you’ve got someone who likes to loot then you’re fine.

I see what you’re saying. The trader stage allows for greater control on balancing and also is another dial that modders can tweak to make the trader more or less significant. I don’t see that as an addition that nullifies attempts to keep the trader from outpacing the player’s crafting ability. The devs will always offer choices so that if there are players who like getting awesome trader rewards and don’t care about crafting there is a path for that. Nobody who wants more crafting in the game must perk up daring adventurer.

What mechanic did they add? Quests and daring adventurer have been in the game for years. If you don’t want to skip tiers then don’t. I agree that there could be more down to balance things towards crafting even more but I still do craft a lot more in A21

So the husband is supposed to get some say? What’s that like?

But if you don’t take daring adventurer and don’t spam quests then the trader is much better balanced compared to A20. So now it’s a choice for how you want to play. If you want to skip to higher tier gear you can take those skills to reflect your desires and awesome stuff will be for sale and rewards. But if you want to craft most of your own gear then do a quest per day and don’t take the perk that increases quest rewards and you can have that kind of fun. In A20 the trader outpaced crafting no matter what you did. It is interesting to me that questing is modeled right now after LBD. As you quest you get better at questing and the only way to get better at questing and get better quests is to quest. So it is no surprise that questing is spammed in such a way that it creates imbalances. That’s the flaw of LBD unless it is limited somehow. Hopefully, the devs will put some limits on questing to help it come into balance with the rest of the game. You can do that voluntarily very easily which I’m fine with but I feel bad for those with no impulse control who wreck their own fun but can’t help wrecking their own fun…

There have been some tickets created which will most likely result in some fixes Monday morning. It’s off by default and not really necessary for solo players—especially if you move around the map a lot. You’ll always have plenty to find without the world becoming empty. If you like creating multiple bases all over then leave it off.

Then your group should probably enable the creative menu and just play the sandbox aspect of the game or find a mod that allows you to ignore the parts of the game you don’t like. Looting and scavenging are major fundamental aspects of the game. You began by saying there are 10-30 of you who play together and that some like to loot but most like to do base activities. With just three looters out of thirty you should be able to progress along all the magazine trees pretty well. But now you’re changing the goalposts by saying that nobody in your group likes to loot and you all just enjoy building. That’s great and there is a setting for that available to your group. The fact that you could play before by ignoring one of the major pillars of the game was simply due to the unfinished nature of a game still in active development. Thankfully there will be mods that will allow your group to play the game with your extreme play style of thirty people who only ever build.

Not so. When you play in a group it becomes obvious very quickly that it is monumentally stupid for everyone to read every book they find without coordination. yeah but if your looters are just reading everything then you’re shooting yourselves in the foot as a group. I agree quests are problematic. They are the last vestige of LBD that exists in the game and need to be limited to prevent the unnatural spamming that occurs. See? Your group doesn’t get it yet that you want one person to read all of one type of mag and then craft for the group. If you and I are competing in any way as a cooperative team then we are dooming ourselves. Neither of us are winning if you find and read 12 forge ahead books and I find and read 10 forge ahead books because we could have had you or me read 22 forge ahead books and be further along together. It is stupid to compete over the same books but it usually clicks at some point. Feeding books to the right people isn’t altruism. It is self interest strategy. It’s completely different than how books were handled in the past and in any of the overhaul mods and so it makes sense that it will take a change in mindset. Then your opinion about playing in a group would have more weight in consideration? You talked as though you were playing as a team of players at first but maybe that was all speculation based on your solo play? It is true that as a solo player you must play as a well-rounded survivor and loot and read everything you find. You can’t extrapolate from that to true team play because for best results you must coordinate the reading of books — not out of altruism but out of common sense and good strategy.

Sorry. I don’t know for sure. I doubt it would affect flurry of Blows since that is specific to clubs but it may affect buffs you currently have from candy like bonus xp gain from kills etc. Just guessing.

All I can speak to is my own experience and we have had streamers ask on the discord if the boost was functioning because they didn’t feel like they were finding the parts and mags that lined up with their perks. Those same streamers could start a new world and have a different experience. I’ve seen it both ways but I’ve always always gathered in a large variety of magazines and with multiple looters you find a ton that everyone can use. After Monday we will have threads reporting that the progression is too fast because the boost is too strong and threads demanding that the boost be fixed because it’s Day 7 and their perked weapon is still an orange level primitive…

Yeah, I’ve noticed some don’t turn. I don’t know what the intention there is whether it’s a bug or they haven’t finished updating them or if they plan to keep it where some do it but others don’t. You’re placing too much emphasis on the perk boost. The boost isn’t a min/max mechanic that makes it stupid for certain people to open certain containers. It is simply a safety net so that you don’t get completely screwed by RNG and never find the mags you need. Your looters will find a wide variety of magazines especially with multiple people all looting and questing. They will find plenty of cooking, farming, and building type mags even if they’re perked into machine guns. I’ve often been able to craft a better unperked weapon than my perked weapon for a time because it is still random and the boost guarantees nothing other than never not finding what you need. No doubt if you join in quests and looting you’ll move up the building tools crafting faster but If you don’t loot or quest at all you’ll still move up. The bigger concern would be looters staying away for 3-4 days at a time. I suspect they’ll either come back to base more often or you’ll want to make a run to whatever outpost they have your stack of magazines stored at…

In my experience you get further up the crafting tiers easier and faster in group play than you do in single player. It does take some coordination as a group to make it all work but it really does. It becomes intuitive and if your group already shares books well you will slip into the new feature seamlessly. I found the coordination and “work” of helping others advance in their craftsmanship to feel very rewarding and definitely one of those emergent objectives that great games always have. You’ll be celebrating with your cook whenever you find a cooking mag for THEM to read. If your looters don’t care about crafting they will very quickly grok that reading mags for them is a waste. They’ll learn to bring them back as a type of resource just like people who bring back iron, wood, stone, and clay for others to make stuff in the forge. Also you can tell them to loot POIs with a building theme like Working Stiffs and they’ll find plenty of building mags regardless of what they are perked into. The nine mags you get from quest rewards are pretty random as well. Really it just comes down to how fast you want to progress. If you want best tools fast then get out there and help loot and quest. If you’re okay with a slower progression to best tools then stay home and build and the mags will come to you in time.

Yes, well that is simply a matter of coordinating rl schedules which can be problematic for any game. The fact that you DO actually have to rely on each other enhances the team building feeling of the game and more than compensates for those times when someone can’t get on to play because it really makes you work as a group. I love that and yes sometimes it’s a bummer when someone can’t get on for an evening— it always is. Then you just have to make do with what you have for that evening.

The meta up to now is to read every book you find because it doesn’t matter if you and I both read the same books. That is different in A21. It actually hurts the group for looters to read everything they find. Best is to assign people to be craftsmen of specific things and then feed them books. So if I loot all the time but am assigned to craft wrenches I should only read those mags and take the rest back to base for others to read and while back at base read any wrench mags others might have brought back. It just depends on what you specifically want to craft. If you don’t care about crafting at all then you don’t need any mags. Just find out who in your group is reading hammers and such and ask them to keep you supplied with the best building tools they can make.

so far, the crates from shotgun messiah, shamway, etc DO remain as containers after you loot them. They remain as cardboard boxes and don’t get recovered in plywood but they do respawn loot.

Hi Archer and welcome to the forum. I think you are fundamentally misunderstanding the new progression. The learn by reading has nothing to do with player levels. People who stay home and build will likely continue to level at the fast pace they always have. The learn by reading system is for gaining crafting recipes. With 30 of you, all you need to do is decide among you who will be in charge of what and then get the appropriate magazines into their hands. It doesn’t matter if they loot, farm, build, mine, or run around killing chickens. If that person is in charge of crafting tools then everyone in the group needs to feed that player tool crafting mags and let that guy craft tools for everyone. It is foolish to have five guys each read three tool crafting mags rather than having one guy read 15. It’s hard to fathom that based on past experience with books and how leveling up was tied to learning new recipes but it is all different now. You gain xp through actions you enjoy doing and that levels you up. Completely separate from that you read magazines to learn better and better recipes. You can be level 200 but still only craft burnt meat If you never read a single cooking magazine. But if someone else on your team read them all and makes stew for everyone then it’s no big deal that you can’t cook the good stuff and that doesn’t leave you behind in leveling up. Hope that clarifies and I know the lightbulb will click fully on as you play it for yourself as I’ve been witnessing all weekend with the streamers. The changes really enhance teamwork and group dynamics.

Exactly. In fact, in the short term you may find more magazines and parts for other weapons you haven’t perked into leading you to think it’s bugged but in the long term you will come out ahead in what you perked into. The boost doesn’t guarantee that you’ll find the mag you want in every loot container. It just guarantees you won’t never find the mag you need. Every playthrough has been different for me due to the randomness of it.

Regarding loot respawn: Loot will still respawn. I did 10 minute days and set loot respawn to 5 days and looted a tier 3 poi. All containers that didn’t poof or change to an empty/open state respawned their loot when I went back. So most of the building had no loot— but the treasure room crates were reloaded and a few containers here and there which haven’t been given an empty/open state helper were reloaded. Anything I destroyed was still gone. With the chunk reset all containers were restored, all destroyed/harvested objects were restored, all empty/open objects were randomly restored. The only lootables that went poof were things like garbage bags, piles of clothes, stacks of ammo, duffel bags, etc. containers like shelves, medicine cabinets, cupboards, carts, garbage cans, etc did not go poof but did just become blocks in an open/empty state and no longer functioned as containers. Already existing open/empty “containers” are not containers at all and are just blocks that can be destroyed but not filled with loot. My suggestion is that if you want to use an existing fridge (for example) that has loot in it, just don’t loot it. Add your own stuff to it and always keep at least one thing in it. End room crates and chests and safes seem to stay as containers and so loot respawns in those. They don’t revert to their factory sealed wood encased labeled versions though. They are just the cardboard boxes you see after breaking them open when loot respawns in them. Water in loot was definitely more scarce in earlier builds than it is currently. They went through a few balancing passes and probably didn’t want it to be too punishing. If feedback from players seems to be that it is all trivial maybe they’ll push it back towards scarcity a bit. But I’ve seen several streams where the players struggled with water. It depends on how RWG treats you.

Since you’re into bland women I think you’ll be happy with some recent models. 😜

As a console player you’re not getting A21 anyway. You can stick to your version and nothing will change for you before, during, or after the streamer weekend anyway.

Yeah. I checked it out and edited my remarks just before you posted. Sorry.

It’s impossible between Xbox version and PC version. There is no Steam version of 7 Days to Die that is an exact match for the Xbox version. Only a few elements of A16 were added to what was an incomplete A15 version. If your friends are playing on their PCs using Game Pass then it may be possible as long as everyone is playing on the same version without mods since the Game Pass version cannot be modded. Xbox to PC no Game Pass PC to Steam PC maybe

The question "Will it be this weekend?" has been asked by @Crater Creator and he is waiting to get an answer from @Hated. We are definitely at the week by week stage now. There are ripples on the surface of the water as the Kraken is poised to strike from deep below.

He has a perfect track record but not in the way anyone wants. Joking aside, if their primary goal is bandits and player characters and anything else gets pushed to A23 if it isn’t done once bandits and player characters are done then for sure A22 will come much sooner than the past several alphas. But just like playing the game always tempts us to do “just one more thing” before quitting for the night, designing the game tempts them to do “just one more thing” before release. They have made quite a bit of progress already for bandits and players. A new female model was just finished this past Friday.

Or you might conclude that 9pm CST is after-hours so they wouldn't be working on bug testing anyway.